Writing. Reading. Parenthood.

kids activities: easy crayon stained glass windows

I know that last week I featured a crayon activity but that’s because reusing crayons is very cool and we have a million nubs of crayons. I’ve been meaning to make stained glass windows (or, in our case, mobiles) for a while. The main drawback to this craft is that it can be adult-intervention heavy. To keep the kids interested and save your sanity, use a pencil sharpener to transform the crayons into flakes instead of a paring knife like I did.

You will need

wax paper

crayon shavings

iron

two older dish towels you don’t mind redecorating with splashes of colour

yarn*

How

I shaved an entire box of crayons, this was probably not necessary as you really don’t need that much. It’s very important to keep the layer of shavings thin, the melted wax spreads and if it too thick, you can’t cut the wax paper into shapes and sunlight cannot get through. This effectively ruins the whole point of making stained glass anything.

1. On a decent-sized sheet of wax paper (waxy side up), spread a thin layer of crayon shavings. To keep relatively mess free, do this on top of one of the dish towels.

2. Play with colour. You’ll be surprised at how the colours will mix together.

3. Sandwich the crayon shavings with a second piece of wax paper, this time waxy side down. Cover with the second dish towel.

4. Iron on a low setting. A friendly reminder that you should be doing this, not your child. Pretend it’s a shirt – move the iron around slowly, this will spread the colours.

5. The reveal: Pull back that dish towel and have a look. Cover and go over any areas that still have lumpy crayon messes.

6. Allow to cool and cut into shapes. Miss N spelled her name, Boy did aquatic life.

7. String on the piece of yarn and hang in a window.

*I tried fishing line for Boy’s mobile and it didn’t work, the pieces of the mobile are too light to weigh down the line and it ended up twirling and making a mess so I had to restring it on the yarn.